The Guest Room

What is going on with the neighbors?

 

            “No, just imagine it with a sandy kind of blue walls.” Pat said with a gesture of her hands. “And black furniture. Not new furniture, we will just paint everything black. It will be so…so retro looking,” they walked into their guest room together.

            “Is retro a good thing?” Stew asked, looking in the nightstand drawers.

            “Yes, of course it is.” Pat looked over his shoulders.

            “I don’t know; I kind of like the way it is now. It’s…comfortable,” he closed the nightstand drawer and began looking in one of the chest drawers he pulled out a blanket and held it with him.

            “Yea, too comfortable, it looks like a room at your Grandma’s house.”

            “What’s wrong with my Gram’s house?” They both smiled. Pat looked out the window and saw Teresa talking to Michael again.

            “You know what I mean. I want something that feels modern and clean. Like when friends come and stay over they feel as if they are in a hotel or something.” Michael was holding his arms out as if he were a bird. Teresa was holding her face.
            “Well… It just sounds like a lot of work.”  

“It won’t be. Not really. And we will have fun,” Teresa ran into her house. Pat frowned.

            “Fun? Painting all this furniture black is your idea of fun?” He began imagining the experience. The bed’s head and foot board, railings, chest of doors, nightstand, the desk… Stew adjusted his footing; he noticed a bruise on his wife’s forearm.
            “Yes,” Pat finally looked away from the window and at Stew. Pat gave him the same nonchalant smile she gave him when he asked her to the movies the first time. Stew frowned only because he was able to say no to anyone but her and she knew it.

            “Well…You are a strange little person,” he tried to grab Pat’s waist but she squirmed away making some kind of animal noise as she did so.

            “I know. But you will see. It will look so nice,” she lay down on the guest bed and smiled.
            “You look so nice,” he said, still holding the plaid blanket at his side. And then they heard the door bell begin ringing repeatedly.